Articles with retirement planning

Layoffs are looming: Part 2!

With the upcoming layoff cycle, we’ve been looking at how we’d be affected if it happens to us. Chances are possible of Mrs. SSC getting cut, mostly due to the heavy, ~30%, cuts they’re making in her department as well as up to 20% business unit cuts. If you read the last post on this you might think, wait, wasn’t it only 12% cuts reported? Yes, yes it was, however, the biggest hit is geoscientists, so while overall it averages out to 12% company wide, the geoscientist group is getting hacked at 20-30% across the board. Yeeowch!

This affects us way more than I first thought. I figured, eh… we should be okay, just a little tight on savings, but then it sparked conversations on life, what we really want, if this career path is even fulfilling enough to go back, and if not, then what? I mean, this could drag out into at least 3 posts, haha! Don’t worry, I won’t belabor you with that, unless it’s still on my mind in a week and I haven’t found something shinier to focus on. I’m sure I could think of another music analogy post… Seriously though, beyond the financial part of all this is the innate thing we’re all searching for, and that is “what do I want to do, that I can get satisfaction from and get paid for?” Currently, that’s not Mrs. SSC’s job.

The other bigger conversation that has been brought up is, what to do next? I mean, Mrs. SSC hasn’t been happy at her company for almost 5 years now. Anyone else see how this timing ties into when Mrs SSC began plotting for FI? Haha! Coincidence? Heck, no!

For most of life we get driven to go certain ways in life or down prescribed career paths by our parents. For Mrs. SSC it’s even more extreme since she is very self-driven. She’s been driven to work hard, get a degree, work harder, save well, and all the other things will sort themselves out with life. At that point you’re already successful, so good job! For me, well I was driven to umm… well… I mean come o,n I was aspiring to be a long haul trucker for the glamour of it. Not exactly the same upbringing, and so let’s just say I took the long loopy path to where I am, and in the midst of all of that, I got to find myself. Mrs. SSC hasn’t had that experience yet and so she’s kind of wanting some time for that self-discovery that she missed when she was younger.

Personally, I think she’d be just as happy working in a bakery decorating cakes, and doing something she can see real results on. I loved working construction and getting to see an empty field become a hospital, or an empty plot of land turn into a house, it’s amazing when you see what you work on turn into something, anything, and not just be a nebulous “ XX barrels of oil/day produced”.

The beleagured point of this is that Mrs. SSC isn’t even sure she wants to go back to this field if she does get laid off. One of my colleagues recently brought up that 50% of people that get laid off in the Oil & Gas industry don’t come back. I’m sure that is an overblown number, but I know over a handful of associates that are okay with walking away for good if they get laid off. Straight up not coming back and finding something else to do with their degree. They have spent YEARS in school working on those degrees to work in this field. Now, if laid off, they’re content looking into gov’t jobs, academia, and even jobs with nothing related to their degree at all.

Heading forward, no looking back. Except this is clearly looking back…

Ever since one of our friends got laid off this spring,  we’ve been working to see how this would affect us if it hit either of our companies. Well, it’s going to hit us in a few different ways but like most people, it starts in the wallet. We maintain a pretty good savings rate of about 50%. So, if we lose one salary, our savings rate would effectively be 0%. We are fortunate to be way ahead of many colleagues, since we generally live off of one salary already. Maybe even a little under that, but for the most part, all of our “essentials” can be taken care of alright with one salary. It’s not nearly as stormy an outlook as I was thinking at first. Plus, Mrs. SSC might get an added bonus of a forced “get to know yourself and what you want to do.”

 

Stormy, but hey, the sun's still shining!
Stormy, but hey, the sun’s still shining!

If a layoff occurs, we would have to find a way to move that savings rate from 0% to hopefully 10%, just to keep FI happening before we turn 50. We’d leave our oldest child in daycare full-time because he thrives well there and does great with the structure, friends, and the like. He will be in his last year before kindergarten, so it’s not a long-term bill, maybe 6 more months tops. Our youngest could do well with a 2-3 days per week/part time day care situation as she seems to be more independent and is a super fast learner. Plus, Mrs. SSC is looking forward to having time to spend with her and help her learn more too.

 

The biggest obvious budget hits are just the other luxury allowances we have now that would go by the wayside. These are the same things that will get cut with the FFLC anyway, so nothing to drastic yet. I’ve saved us about $1200 this year just doing the yard all season (it still has about 3 months before it ends) so that’s good, and we’d cut the maids saving us $260/month, and then Mrs. SSC parking and work gym would get rolled into an outside gym fee, which would likely even out. That’s her hobby, outlet, and she likes it and uses it, so we’re both good with that. Plus, we would be saving quite a bit on tolls and gasoline, since each commuting day is the equivalent of ~2.5 gallons of gas or ~$9, and $2.50 in tolls. At 220 working days a year, that is just over $2530/yr. Maybe we could even get the car insurance rate dropped on her vehicle too! Groceries budget could easily go down by $50-$75/month since Mrs. SSC would have time to shop for better deals, and we wouldn’t have to buy ‘convenience’ foods anymore. We could likely trim another $25-50 of general spending a month for the same reasons.

 

That beach might not be the most comfortable, but it's still beautiful!
That beach might not be the most comfortable, but it’s still beautiful!

When we looked at our FFLC date, it is a different story though. First off, I’ve gotta give a shout out to my man, compounding interest! Yeah, that’s my boy!! We’ve been good at feeding our FFLC accounts so they’ll still be working in our favor, hopefully. With our savings effectively reduced to 0%, we know we’ll just have to play a couple rounds of “what expense goes next?!”. We’re assuming we can still save at least ~$1k/month/yr and then increase it by $1k/month the next year due to my raises and maybe Mrs. SSC getting a part-time gig. I think we may be able to save more, especially if we make it a challenge. Take that and assume  a 6% investment growth, and we’re still looking at mid 2020 for our FIRE date! We’re not looking at a date as early as ThinkSaveRetire, but we’re still doing better than most in this downturn since we still have an early retirement date before we’re both 45!

That’s a lot better than I was thinking initially. It helps to know your target number, and be aware of your budget, because of the case in point. My mind totally blew out of proportion how negatively we’d be affected, and then you do the math (I try to not ever do the math) and it’s like, “whoa! We got this, and we can adapt. Alright then… We can do this!” And then hope we don’t have to do this. Until we find out what we’ll be doing exactly, we’re just going to keep on, keeping on.

July 2015 Update

July was a rather boring mundane month, and after all the unexpected costs in June, I’ll take it! Boring is good on some levels, especially when it relates to out of pocket spending. For the most part, we’re on track with our predicted FFLC budget, and on an upside, July was our third cheapest month of spending this year. This has been good for us keeping a more detailed look at the finances to be able to see how accurate our predictions are for our FFLC number. Based on the year’s spending to date, it looks like our yearly budget is running right around $54k. This is inline with what we’re thinking so our target date remains unchanged. That may change in 8 weeks, but for now, we’ll just move forward as if things are good all around. Now to discuss some budget numbers!

July pie

 

As far as specifics go, the pet’s column is a little high again due to taking Lola to the vet for a baseline checkup and get her flea/tick preventer and heartworm meds. We should be good for staying away from the vet for a while now, but you never know. Groceries were a bit higher than usual, but that’s probably due to the Mother-in-law being at the house for about 3 weeks. Mrs. SSC had some allergies flare up and then turn into bronchitis, so the medical bumped up a bit. She’s fine, but had a continuous cough for almost a month… Due to the ridiculous heat, yes I know it is summer in the Gulf South, our utilities are higher as well, and that’s just keeping the house around 78… Blech…

Numbers, numbers, everywhere...
Numbers, numbers, everywhere…

On the plus side, it looks like the car repair/gas/toll is down from what is typical, woohoo for that! Phone/internet/tv is down due to the plan switching, although do I have a gripe with the new guys. I’ll save that for later though.

 

Yeah no more tall bars!
Yeah no more tall bars!

Thank goodness for an easy no surprises month. Whew! It was a welcome relief after June’s outflow of cash. I hope your spending has stayed reigned in and your month went as well as ours!

 

Forever In Blue Jeans? Done!

I love music, and I have since I can remember. It can give me chills, make me smile, make me cry, it’s the one thing I truly love in so many of its forms. My dad also loved music, stuff I can now appreciate musically, but most of which I still consider “crap” (sorry dad, but a lot of it is bad). Mom was more Motown, R&B, and “oldies” centric, but R&B when it meant rhythm and blues, The Temptations, The Supremes, Marvin Gaye, The Four Tops, Ray Charles, man, I’m giddy just remembering those guys, and yep, just started a good Motown playlist in the background. Aaahhh…

One musician dad was a huge fan of that stuck with me though is Neil Diamond. Man, I love me some Neil! Cheesy as it can be, those lyrics cut to my soul so much, because I just get it. Although, as Mrs. SSC put it, “Neil Diamond, Neil Young, same diff, right?” Oh, Mrs. SSC…

Neil D
I don’t know that he ever wore blue jeans…

But one of his songs in particular lately has struck a chord with me, “Forever in blue jeans.” What a song! It resonates with most of what I read on your blogs most every week, which is mainly that acquiring loads of money doesn’t matter, but as long as you have each other or what you deem your priority in life, you’re good. It’s about getting your life to a point where you call the shots and where you’re happy. Who doesn’t want that?

My whole life I’ve been money centric.

Money, money, money!! This was one of my first purchases as an intern in New Orleans.

Growing up broke as can be with parents that have zero good financial sense, I’ve tried to work towards making as much money as possible so that money is never a worry. Worrying about money, is the worst feeling in my life. It ranks up there with finding out someone you care about has died. I really hate worrying about money. This was my hangup with ER. Why the hell would I walk away from a nice comfortable setup to go back to scrounging just to not work?! No way! But then my focus changed.

For me, it was my kids. After having them I realized 2 things: 1. I’d do anything in the world for them. Yes, this really most exclusively means trading my life for theirs if God forbid that was ever an option, 2. I want to spend as much time with those guys as possible while I can.

One day, they’re going to go make their own lives and it is coming way sooner than I want. I already know this, and they just turned 2 and 4. I only have 16 years before they’re gone and off to college or career or who knows what, but it’s coming.

How does this affect me or my lifestyle or even our FFLC? Man, has my priority switched, because, since then and now, we’ve found our number that we’ve been living off of and can live off of and we have a date when we should reach that number. That date is in about 3 years and then we’ll be leaving our jobs.

Coming back to the Neil Diamond song, I realized my focus was echoed by these lyrics.

“Money talks,
But it don’t sing and dance
And it don’t walk.
And long as I can have you
Here with me, I’d much rather be
Forever in blue jeans”
….”And if you pardon me
I’d like to say
We’ll do okay
Forever in blue jeans, babe
And long as I can have you
Here with me I’d much rather be
Forever in blue jeans, babe”

Let’s see. Our “comfy life” as it is now, involves an almost 1 hr. commute each way, 9’ish hr’s at the office 4-5 days a week, to see the kids an hr or two a day before bed, and then get to hang with them while catching up on other errands/chores and what not over the weekends… Yeah, we’ve made it!! Versus taking a chance that our ER plans go as planned, but maybe we’ll be forever in blue jeans? I’ll take it.

I get really freaked out by this sometimes, and I try to put on a brave face, but I still get worried. Worried that we’ll try and fail. Worried that we’ll leave our “nice” jobs and end up in a horrid life of scrounging, scrimping, and worrying about money constantly. Kill me now, please. The knot and 20 lb weight in my stomach just writing about it makes me SO risk averse, part of me just wants to keep working until I’m really, really, sure I’ll always be good. And this is probably what drives most people to work for SO much of there lives. But that “horrid” life of watching our funds and scrounging for money, if it came to that still sounds like it’s a way better quality one than I’m living now.

I realized I’d rather be doing my life on my terms and forever in blue jeans, than in an office answering, “Yes, sir! Of course sir! Tomorrow sir, you’ll have those reports!” and if sh!t hits the fan, well, I’d rather try and fail than sit by in quiet fear and trepidation wondering what if. You know what I won’t get back ever? Time with my family. I also know that between me and Mrs. SSC, we can be making half the money my family was raised on and we’ll make it work comfortably. So, yeah, I’ll take that chance on spending as much time with family as possible while also maybe making my life way less comfortable than it is now. I have to say, the “comfort” I’m giving up versus the comfort I’m working towards I’ll take any day. And if we’re forever in blue jeans, I don’t count that as a fail either.

What made you want to get to FIRE/FFLC/Not working for the man and doing thing on your terms?

 

Neil Diamond Picture from https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kAWpkBurVno

Sunshine Blogger Award!

sunshine-blogger-award-300x300
Our blog was nominated for the Sunshine Blogger award by the bloggers over at Ditching the Daily Grind! Thanks for the nomination guys, I’ve been enjoying reading your blog! It’s nice reading about other families out there on the same path, and how their kids have/have not affected their FIRE goals.  We really appreciate getting nominated for that award! Now, let’s get to the fun stuff!
The Rules:
Thank the person that nominated you
Answer the questions from the person that nominated you
Nominate some other bloggers for this award
Write the same amount of questions for the bloggers you have nominated
Notify the bloggers you have nominated.

The Responses to our set of questions:

When you were a kid, what did you want to be when you grew up?

These are really different answers from Mrs. SSC and I. Our family dynamics and priorities were pretty different  growing up, as reflected in SO many ways in our lives. This is just one of those instances.

Mrs. SSC: She wanted to be a scientist or professor when she grew up. She’s done pretty well meeting those goals too, between being an actual rocket scientist for a bit, teaching some in grad school, and science-ing it up at her current career in the oil industry.
Mr. SSC: I wanted to be a long haul trucker. Yep, the guys on the road in the big-rigs hauling the 54’ trailers. I thought it would be fun, I’d get to travel a lot, see the country, and have a lot of freedom. Plus, you get to drive the biggest trucks out there! Woohoo! I’m a geologist instead and those dreams are in the rear-view mirror of life, and thankfully not the rear view mirror of my big rig.

What is the coolest/most memorable place you’ve visited

Aaahhh.....
Aaahhh…..

Mrs. SSC: Yosemite National Park. It was breathtaking and also one of the first times I ever went camping and hiking by myself. It was one of the first times I was able to take everything at my own pace, observe nature around me, and just get to be introspective and not have to deal with anyone else’s time table or schedule. It was awesome!

I really took this. It's so beautiful even at night.
I really took this. It’s so beautiful even at night.

Mr. SSC: Le Mont Saint Michel in Normandy, France. It’s an island commune and monastery that is just offshore, like ~600 meters. Besides being stunningly beautiful, an amazing thing is the tidal range of that part of the coast. When the tide goes out, it goes out 15 miles from the shore and drops nearly 40’!! When it comes in again, bam! The monastery is again an island surrounded by water. We got to take a 7 mile hike across the tidal flat at low tide, and it was awesome as a geologist, getting to see all those tidal features first hand. If you’ve never seen it, google it and check out the images, amazing! My picture doesn’t do it justice.

If money was not an issue and you could indulge in one thing, what would it be?

Mrs. SSC: My one thing would be land. I would want to buy an amazing plot of land with great views, mountains, fruit trees and more, and build a small but luxurious house. That and a Disney Cruise for the kids. Our friends say “it’s great!” and “the kids would love it!”, just like a 50’s tv ad, but it just seems SO expensive, so probably that too.

Mr. SSC: I’d go to the moon and spend a few hours bouncing around in my astronaut suit and riding one of those moon buggies around. That just seems like it would be a LOAD of fun, and it was literally the first thing that popped out of my mouth when I read this question. I mean, who could afford that nowadays? Not even NASA right, and you did say money was no issue. That would be my indulgence for sure.

What is the best compliment you’ve ever gotten?

Mrs. SSC: I don’t respond well to compliments, so I avoid them, and can’t think of a best compliment I’ve ever gotten. Sorry…

Mr. SSC: My best compliment was um, well, yeah I don’t know either really. I’ve been scouring my brain, but nothing jumps out. Sorry…

What legacy would you like to leave?

Mrs. SSC: I feel that if I can get the kids to grow up and be true to themselves, that would be good for me. I want them to be who they want to be, and not try to be someone that they think they should be because someone else wants them to be that way.

Mr. SSC: My legacy – with visions of being a trucker, I can’t say I’ve thought too much about a legacy that I would like to leave. When I was hiking the Appalachian Trail, I decided that I wanted to do something that would help the environment and not just take, take, take. Ironically, I ended up switching from Environmental Science to Geology and ultimately landed in the oil industry. Since I’ve had kids, I’d like for them to be adults that aren’t self-centered and self-serving and are empathetic to helping those who need it. Like Louis C.K. put it, “You should never look into your neighbors to bowl to see if they have more than you, but rather to see if they have enough.” If I can raise my kids to have that mindset, I’d feel good about that.

What do you prefer: beach or mountains?

Mt. Hood. We need to get back out there soon.
Mt. Hood. We need to get back out there soon.

Both: Mountains for sure! Our relocation spot for our Fully Funded Lifestyle Change has to include a few things and mountains is one of them. We grew up near the Appalachians, so we like the feel of those mountains and are looking forward to being back there. I also love the Rockies, and could be there too, but as long as there are mountains and 4 seasons I’ll take it any day!

Our nominees for the Sunshine Blogger Award are (in no particular order):
Their questions:
        • What did you want to be when you grew up?
        • What is your favorite superhero and why? If you don’t have one, why not?
        • Who is your favorite author?
        • What person has had the biggest influence on your life?
        • What’s your favorite comfort food when it’s a chill night at the house?
Thanks again to Ditching the Daily Grind for the award nomination!

Retiring “Big Sky”?

If you don’t know, Mrs. SSC and I like to watch home renovation shows, Renovation Realities, Property Brothers, and even home buying/selling type of shows like Love it or List It, House Hunters, and recently, Tiny House Hunters and Tiny House Nation. You’re probably thinking, “Thanks for sharing your TV preferences, but what does this all have to do with ER or finance or anything?” Well, recently Mrs. SSC discovered a new show called Living Big Sky, essentially a house hunters for Montana. It has amazing views everywhere you go, and people keep using phrases like, “we loved it so much during vacation, we decided to move here,” and “Every day we wake up we feel like we’re on vacation. Just look at these views.” Which led Mrs. SSC to ask me, “Are we setting the bar too low in the Appalachians? Will we feel like that when we retire? What if we got big views like that too?”

It's No Montana, but it's still beautiful!
It’s No Montana, but it’s still beautiful!

Yes, there are some impressive views, but we’re basically talking about moving from the Gulf Coast to Southern Canada. Previously, we’d investigated places in Idaho, Oregon, Washington, Colorado, and the like, but ultimately found what we “think” we’re looking for in Virginia, North Carolina, Eastern Tennessee.

I say, “think” because, except for vacationing around those areas, hiking through those areas, and other short term type of trips, we’ve not gotten out there to visit for a week with the express purpose of house hunting, community snooping, and general poking around to get a feel of the town and surrounding area. The little things like, where are the closest grocery stores, is this area “too far” from town? We’re hoping to get there and do a recon trip in the fall, but that is highly dependent on if Mrs. SSC’s mom can cover the little ones for a few days. I’m not spending 4-7 hours in a car driving around with toddlers in the back. That sounds horrid for everyone involved.

Virginia is nice and has great properties with excellent views. It’s like we discussed, yes, I love the west and Rockies, and those sorts of views, but the Appalachians feel comfortable, and homey, and I find them beautiful. The mountain laurel, rhododendrons, streams, and green-ness of the landscape just brings me back to my growing up days of hiking and backpacking in Eastern Kentucky with my Grandad, and at Mammoth Cave National Park backcountry. I love the hollows and ravines, and rolling hills, broken up by some mountains, and most of all, Fall! I miss seeing leaves change colors, the smell in the air, the crisp bite of winter on the back of a warm fall breeze, reminding you that winter is coming. Almost as nice is Spring. Real Spring, where you feel warm air mixed in with the biting cool breeze, and see trees bud, bright blossoms emerge, and watch the brown landscape become green, lush and vibrant again. After 8 years on the Gulf Coast, I guess I really miss seeing seasons change, and realize that’s something I definitely want.

We are hoping we will have a view like this from our porch!
We are hoping we will have a view like this from our porch!

In the meantime, we started looking out west again. Except for some real fixer uppers that are already at the top of our budget (~$300k – with reno included) we would have to work another year for some out west living. With the experiences of fixing things in the last 2 homes we’ve lived in, plus the horror shows that unfold on Renovation Realities, and Love It or List It, I realize we could spend more than anticipated on a fixer upper. If we’re already at the top of our budget, it gets tight finding something we can afford, with land, etc… Nothing that warrants a whole extra year of working.

If I had a million dollars, I'd still probably move here.
If I had a million dollars, I’d still probably move here.

It reminded me of one of the couples on the Living Big Sky show. They bought a house at the top of their $600k budget, saying “We’ll find a way to make it work, because this is our dream house.” It was custom everything, and they both said, “We just love the uniqueness of everything being custom.” Before I even thought about it I blurted out, “Oh you’ll love it until it breaks, and you’re paying custom prices to fix it.” Side note – our shower door broke Sunday, and after 3 estimates, consultation with 4 companies, and about 5 hours online we found out, there is no repair – only replace…

Ultimately, we think we’ll end up on the East Coast though. The land is cheap, houses are affordable, and we love the views. We may end up somewhere else, but unless we find something amazing at a great price in 3 more years, we’re most likely East Coast bound!

What are your “Big Sky” ER plans?

Are you planning on moving or staying where you are when you pull the trigger?

We’re headed to the track!

Best new investment strategy around!
Best new investment strategy around!

A while back I noticed a lot of bloggers talking about what you should do with your tax return, as opposed to what most people would actually do with their tax returns. As a kid, this was always a nice time of year because we generally got a fairly healthy tax refund. It was like a financial Christmas, and presents would be bought, we’d get treated to some dinners out, and usually within a month or less, it would all be gone. Nothing invested, maybe some immediately pressing bills caught up, but generally, it was frittered away here and there. As an adult, I’ve tried to be more fiscally responsible, which is why we invest our tax refund. This year instead of putting it into our usual investment hidey holes, I convinced Mrs. SSC to go a different route and diversify our investments. Being from Kentucky, where we’re most famous for horses and bourbon, I decided investing in bourbon wasn’t up my alley, but how could you go wrong with horses?! It’s like they say, “How do you make a small pile of cash off horse racing? Start with a big pile of cash.” So that’s what I plan to do!

 

That’s right, I’m putting it all into horses. I’m sure you’re thinking, “Wait a second, most horses are privately owned and you can’t really buy shares of them, can you? Are you planning on investing in a horse training facility, or farm?” You’re right, I can’t diversify our portfolio with “shares of a horse” so I’m heading to the tracks baby! I usually do pretty well on Kentucky Derby day investments, and over the last few years I’ve managed to clean up. I did some calculations and my investments at the track have yielded over 200% return year to year. I did have a down year here and there, but modeling the amount invested against the returns, makes the stock market look paltry in comparison. I mean really 7% is supposed to be a “good” number? I’m talking averaging 200% returns. If you put that into my other modeling spreadsheets, I can have us to our FI/FFLC goal 2 years earlier!! 2 years!

 

Now that I’ve piqued your curiosity, you’re probably wondering, “How can you do this though, because The Kentucky Derby is a month away, PLUS it is only once a year. You won’t be able to make that much on one race, right?” You’re right again, I knew we had some smart readers! Plus, like I’ve found on all the FI blogs I read, you don’t want all your eggs in one basket, so I’ll be diversifying and spreading my investments over MANY races. I have taken our tax refund and parlayed it into a side hustle of betting on horses! We’re midway through the racing season, so I only have a half a season left, but I’m confident that I can more than double our refund. Already, I’ve been able to get a 30% return on my “investment choices”. 30%!! Our portfolio hasn’t done that yet! It makes me want to show our portfolio my winning stubs investments and say, “Get with the program, portfolio! What have you done for me lately?! Slow and steady, more like, Slow and Slower… sheesh!” I digress…

 

This weekend, I plan to get the investment action in full swing though. I’ve been researching the upcoming races around the country, track conditions, racing surfaces, horses, and put them all into a spreadsheet. Then I run a few Monte Carlo scenarios and pick the new members of the SSC Investment Portfolio. It has worked well so far with predicting which “investments” I should be making, so I will continue to follow it. I diverged from this method last weekend and I found that picking a horse with a funny name isn’t the best investment strategy, so I’ll keep science-ing it up. Not sure why I thought “Pajama Pancake” and “Tweedling Peanut” would pull out a win, when my spreadsheet said otherwise, but I know better now. Seriously though, I don’t know why people haven’t thought about this before, it’s pretty dang easy once you get all the variables accounted for.

 

I’m excited about keeping this train to FI rolling and get us retired a few years earlier than we’ve planned using traditional methods, and now I get why more people aren’t doing this whole FIRE thing. They’re sticking to slow methods with even slower investment return times. No wonder everyone works until they’re 60 or older, it takes that long for the stock market to work! Ain’t nobody got time for that! Certainly not this household. While the stock market keeps trying to make me some coin, I’ll be laughing all the way to the bank with my new diversification strategy!

 

Do you have a unique side hustle that outperforms the market?

Do you want a copy of my Horse Racing spreadsheet, so you too can be more diversified?

Have you realized today’s April 1st yet?

 
image from hdwallpapersnew.net

TGISB! (Thank God It’s Spring Break)

SUCK-ville! Don't worry, we were stopped. For a while...
SUCK-ville! Don’t worry, we were stopped. For a while…

These last 2 weeks have been awesome! First, Harris county was on Spring Break, and then the outlying counties have been on Spring Break! Hopefully next week some other set of schools is out on Spring Break also. Why do I care about Spring Break since neither me nor my kids are even in school? I’ll tell you, because “Traffic has been great!” (a phrase rarely uttered anywhere near Houston freeways) I’ve been getting to work in 30 minutes, traffic is flowing well, and even when it is storming outside (which normally causes HUGE delays everywhere) traffic is still moving fine.

I remember last summer when I started my new job. (Initiate dream sequence music and sparkly fade out) It was mid-June, the birds were singing and the commute was nice. Traffic flowed well, there were no major headaches to deal with twice a day. Better yet, it was almost the exact same as my last commute. Then one day, everything changed and it went from “nice” to “SUCK-ville” overnight! Clogged highways no matter which one I took. Worse, the surface streets were just as clogged and slow too! I started looking at different commute routes but it didn’t make a difference overall. Somehow my commute had increased a consistent 10-20 minutes each way. I just couldn’t figure out what changed and then someone mentioned school. Oh… school… Riiiight… Man, that makes such a big difference. I guess people take vacation time off centered around Spring Breaks, Christmas Breaks, Summer Breaks, and other school closures.

You wouldn’t think that a few schools out would make that much difference, but based on how empty my office building and parking garage has been the last few weeks, it seems everyone with kids takes off this time to do something with family. It could be that there isn‘t a vacation, but rather a forced stay at home to babysit the kid. Most people I talk to though turn that into a vacation of some sort instead of just sitting around the house. I never ran into this too much growing up because my mom was home for most of our school age. For us, it was just another week to not have to go to school, which is still awesome in and of itself!

Note the string of cars on the bridge. FYI, they're stopped too.
Note the string of cars on the bridge. FYI, they’re stopped too.

Does this do anything for me financially? No, not really? Does it help me get to FIRE quicker? Even more so, nope. However, if traffic was like this every day, I wouldn’t be in such a rush to pull the trigger as soon as financially possible. I’d be a little more content putting it off for another 6 months, or maybe even a year and build up that comfort factor and savings. Then think, “Well, if I give it a few more months I can stick it out until bonuses get here, and it’d be crazy to give up that much money only a few months away.” This situation still may happen though even with the blech commute. We might have Mrs. SSC going to part-time at her job, and since I don’t think my company offers that, I’ll probably stay full time until things get really serious. Although, I don’t have anything to lose asking for part-time, so I will definitely ask when the time gets here.

From everything I’ve read though, once people pull the trigger and retire their biggest regret is not doing it sooner. Granted, these are mostly older people, but even some of the FIRE blogs I read echo that same sentiment. I’d love to make it sooner, but there are certain thresholds that need to be crossed financially before that can happen. Until then, I enjoy working where I do, with the people I work with and am happy plugging away at our goal until we get there. In the short term though, I’m counting down the days until school is out, and I get this traffic reprieve for a few months!

Retirement Quest: Where to live?

Where to retire is a big question that only you and your family can answer. Maybe you plan on staying where you are now because you’ve already built a life and social network there and don’t want to disrupt it. My dad never moved away from his hometown his entire life, so retirement for him meant not working and getting to enjoy the same social network and activities he did while working. My mom, on the other hand, is more of the wandering artist type that has lived all over and doesn’t seem to stay in any one place too long. She is currently back in my hometown, but I doubt she’ll be there too long, because it gets too cold for her to want to stay too long. That led me to think of what people look for in a retirement town, or even more so, a “pre”-tirement town.

Mrs. SSC and I have been researching different towns and cities to relocate to when we pull the plug and switch to stay at home parents, since we have no desire to remain in Houston. For us though, it’s not as easy as Googling, “Where are the best places to retire”? Mainly, because the word ‘retire’ is associated with people decades older than we will be.  We want an active community, trails to hike, and rivers to fish.  A place that is overflowing with families and good public schools for our kids. A good education is essential to us, and one of the reasons we have a longer than ideal commute currently in Houston.  Sure, we could have afforded to live close to work, but those public schools closer to downtown are horrid. Meaning we would need to move or pay almost $15k/yr/kid for private freaking grade school when our kids got to school age. That’s ridiculous! My college tuition wasn’t that much per year!  Also, in our future pre-tirement town, we want topography and four seasons. After spending 6+ years in the Gulf Coast, we both miss snow, Fall, leaves changing, and seeing bumps in the horizon that aren’t overpasses or buildings. I have really appreciated being able to fire up the smoker on Thanksgiving in flip-flops, shorts and a nice Hawaiian shirt, and be perfectly comfortable outside, but I also miss getting to wear sweatshirts, sweaters, and the feeling you actually need a fire to cozy up to, and not just turn on the gas fireplace because it’s sort of cold out (it dipped below 50!! EEEEK!!!).

How have we figured out where we want to move when we depart Houston? Well, we haven’t yet, but we’re down to our short list. We started by taking those things mentioned above (topography, four seasons, education) along with our knowledge of places we lived or visited and started doing research. Combining our wants with stats on cost of living, home prices, taxes, school quality, and weather helped us cross entire geographic regions off of our list.  Take New England for instance. We both love it and think it’s pretty, even with some harsher winters, but we’d rather not incur such a high cost to live there between taxes, housing, and heating. Another region is California; it’s beautiful and the northern part of the state would be nice, however, it’s expensive, has water issues, and doesn’t meet some of our criteria.

After some time, we narrowed our scope down to the Appalachians, the Rockies, and the Pacific Northwest.

North Carolina has some appeal for us and there are some nice towns there we think could work. So we have a town or two still on the list, but we kept looking. We both liked Oregon, but man, so do a lot of other people, and some of our towns that popped out ended up seeming like Boulder,CO in terms of excellent outdoor activity but ridiculous housing cost. So there are a few Oregon towns on the list as well, but we still kept looking.

Same with Colorado; it fits a lot of criteria, but ultimately the towns we looked into got put into the B list category. Some Colorado Front Range towns are nice and fit a lot of our criteria, but if we’re in CO, we would like easier access to the ski resorts, and if we want some type of mountain living or mountain views, we thought we could find some other places that could be a better fit. Again, there is a drought/water issue that persisted for the 9 years I lived in Denver through to the present.

We even came across a town in northern Idaho that seems to have stayed at the top of the short list. Idaho… I still cringe when I look at a map and see that we’re basically looking at Southern Canada. Seriously, talk about one extreme to another. I’ve been monitoring the weather for this area, Denver, and Chicago, IL as these are all points of reference to climates Mrs. SSC and I have lived in that we liked or don’t want to be as harsh as. So far, it’s been trending just like the historical weather data has shown. Which is still pretty, pretty, cold and with a long winter season. So, lately, we are  looking back at the Appalachians with its more moderate winters, and think we may have found a good spot in western Virginia.

We both spent a lot of time in the Appalachians either growing up in the region (Mrs. SSC) or just hiking in them (Mr. SSC). Roanoke, VA has good school ratings, good home prices, good home layouts (yes, I get bored and house shop on Zillow). I find there are a lot of houses out there that would work great for us. Some of the houses need some updating, which is ideal. We want to do remodeling to make the home reflect more of our personalities, without having to redo the whole house.  Many homes have workshops already built, which is ideal for my woodworking equipment and projects. Also, there are some houses with killer views and a little land, so no suburbia feel to it either. Now, to hope the perfect house pops up on the market in another 3-4 years!

So, here is our current short list – I’m curious to see how it evolves over the next several years:

  • Roanoke, VA
  • Boone, NC
  • Coeur d’Alene, ID
  • Bend, OR

Our “long” list includes satellite towns near these, or other “B” locations in the same state. For instance, most of the smaller areas around Roanoke (Salem, Cave Springs, etc..) have good schools and housing options. The same is said for Boone, NC and Bend, OR. Mrs. SSC’s family likes to play “what town are you guys retiring to this month?” when they visit as the short list gets shuffled occasionally. It’s fun for us to research different areas, and it keeps the reality that soon, we can permanently be in one of these places at the top of our thoughts.

I think Virginia could be a great fit, and can’t wait to check it out from a “we could be living here” perspective. It feels more like home to us, and we love the green landscape of the Appalachians. This is the 6th town in the last year to top out the short list, and so far we haven’t found a deal breaker yet. They have a good tax situation, and pending Mrs. SSC’s “dry-run” for what our tax situation could be like when we retire, it might be a bonus for that state.

What is it you look for in your perfect retirement place? Someplace warm, or cold, or with abundant water, maybe abundant golf, maybe a nearby college that allows for a steady stream of renters if you are going the property investment route? Let me know, I’d love to hear about some things I may not have thought about. Does anyone else house hunt on Zillow to check out what type of houses to expect in their retirement destination, or is that just me?

Out of my control? Then get out of my mind!

After my recent post about freaking out that our early retirement plans will fail and we will be in the poorhouse by our own choices, I came across an article about people and their regrets about retirement. I found it pretty enlightening and it helped ease the worry, and caused a laugh or two at some of the answers. Ultimately, it was pretty divided between, “I should’ve planned better” and “I should’ve trusted my planning better and not worried so much about it.”

That article made me realize that I’m in the “I should’ve trusted our planning, and not gotten so freaked out about it” camp. Remember in my potato chip post, that the practical side of me that slapped me silly for spending 4 minutes debating whether or not to go with the cheaper store brand chips and save $1.50, or not? Well, my face is stinging from another slap back to reality.  I need to quit spending so much time worrying about the un-knowable. I could wallow in the land of worry if I let myself. Its so easy to just pull up a chair and have a good time in “Freak-out Land” worrying about everything from terror attacks on U.S. soil, Ebola (get the masks!), the economy crashing, layoffs (come on oil prices, creep back up…), will the kids stay healthy, and a myriad of other worries I have ZERO control over. Feel free to add yours in the comments below. These aren’t things that I typically worry about, rather things that someone could worry about, and get themselves all worked up over.

For instance, last week, I spent a good 15 minutes listening to one of my co-workers talk about how her biggest fear in our office is that our doors don’t have locks. First of all, hooray to a company that still has actual offices and doors, and not cubes, fishbowls, or any variation on open work spaces*. These are pretty solid wooden doors too, so I mean, hey, I can actually shut it, and have a private phone call if needed. Score one for those doors! Unless you’re my co-worker. She worries about not having locks, not so she can take naps, or do whatever she needs to behind locked doors at work… She’s worried about, “When someone goes postal and I hear gunshots, I won’t be able to lock the door!” This is in quotes, because that’s exactly how she said it. As a certainty, nay, an inevitability that she needs to be prepared for. She then went through her plan of tipping over the file cabinet to block the door (I’d be really surprised if she could actually do that just based on physics and basic principles of force), and hiding behind her desk… She’s really worried about it and started hyperventilating a little while talking about it. I mean, people, people, people, get ahold of yourselves. Yes, that can happen, but we’re talking about a building that has pretty decent security with badges you need to swipe to get anywhere, security guards that wander around, although they seem to be on their phones more than “securing” anything. But the point is, this isn’t even a sort of work place where you read about these types of occurrences happening. Yes it can happen anywhere, but why should I waste time, energy and emotion worrying about it?

This was when my practical side slapped me and said, “You sound exactly like this when you talk about FIRE fail, and being broke, broke, broke-ity broke due to a circumstance you can’t foresee. The only difference is, that you have actually tried to account for unknowns with cushions built in here and there. These are to lessen that emotional angst about having no contingency plan if the sh!t hits the fan. All of the simulation models show your plan working, plus you and Mrs. SSC can be WAY more effective with very little money due to your ability to know how to prioritize, budget, and get jobs if needed! Snap out of it buddy, because you sound just like her!”

Soooo, that was when I thought, “You know, I make some pretty good points!” We’ve accounted for contingencies as best as we can. Except for working for 10-15 more years to gather enough cash and savings to cover most of those extraneous contingencies, there’s just no way of knowing what the future may hold. Anyways, lets get back to different retiree’s regrets from that article I mentioned earlier… One person’s regret was not retiring sooner because he’d spent his whole life building the perfect retirement for his family only to be diagnosed with 2 types of incurable cancer, soon after retiring. He was happy his family would get to benefit from it, but regretted not spending more time with them instead of working so much, and not taking more vacations. I’ve experienced that scenario first hand with a close friend whom died 2 weeks after retiring due to some rare virus. There are lots of things we could worry about, but I’d rather be a “cross that bridge when it gets built” kind of guy than a “Let’s figure out a way to get across a bridge that doesn’t exist, and we have no idea how big it is, how wide it is, or how long it is” kind of guy.

Like Aaron Rodgers told his fans when they were freaking out, “R-E-L-A-X. Relax….” So, I’m going to try and make that my approach. I’ll be prudent, but not Chicken Little, and I’ll stop freaking out about retirement, economic collapse, stock market fails, world wars, zombie apocalypses (it could happen you know!) and any other things that could wreck our retirement financial planning.  Mrs. SSC swears that if I can stop wanting to prepare for EVERY case, and just for an average case we could knock quite a bit of time off of our working years.  Maybe that is part of the key, trusting yourself to be innovative and be able to handle the black swan events in family finances.  Maybe we will have to get a job for a year or two to make some extra cash to cover a medical situation or stock decline… but isn’t the chance of needing to work for a year in the middle of retirement better than then definitively resigning yourself to work a few extra years just to cover some hypothetical situation?

Do you have freak-outs about stuff you can’t control? What do you do to reign yourself in? Do you think there will be a zombie apocalypse? If so, how would it affect your early retirement?

I’d love to hear your comments and what you occasionally worry about.

 

* – A “fishbowl” is a term used to describe the offices at my last company. 2 solid thin walls on each side, a big glass window in back, and then the front of the cube is all glass. Yes, there’s a sliding door and some of it is frosted, but with it being glass, it has quite a “fishbowl” look to it.

Why FIRE “Freaks me out, man!”

WHYOver the last few days, I’ve had a bit of a revelation regarding FIRE and my comfort level with it. I realized that I’m pretty uneasy about walking away from our nice paying jobs with paychecks that come in every other week. Trading that to enter a life that depends on a pile of cash not getting drained, and even growing while we whittle away at it year after year hoping we planned correctly and it lasts until we die, makes me a wee bit nervous. The biggest revelation wasn’t that I’m nervous about that being successful, it was the WHY behind me being nervous. After some contemplation,  I realized that it boils down to this: In my childhood, I was always subjected to fears about money, specifically, not having enough of it, and not utilizing what we did have effectively at all. And now as an adult, I worry that I could end up back in that situation, by choice! Gah!!!

Here’s the back story:
My parents fit the typical American model of “no emergency fund so to speak, definitely no savings, no concept of financial responsibility or good decision making with money”. Yep, typical American. We lived literally paycheck to paycheck, and there were times we would have $0 until dad got paid. Sometimes it might only be a day, sometimes 2-3, it just depended on what bills REALLY had to get paid and which ones could be pushed off. The cars were NEVER reliable, so there was always an impending car repair being put off until it really broke as well. This was always stressful, although I’m guessing my parents didn’t realize how stressful it was for us kids. I don’t know if my brother or sister ever noticed or worried about this, but man, it was one of the loudest things in my head. “Where is grocery money coming from? Why are they buying that, that’s our lunch money. How are we going to get the lights turned back on and have money for gas to get us to school, the grocery store, dad to work, etc… why do other families not seem to struggle with this so much?” Seriously, if anyone is familiar with the show Malcom in the Middle, or Shameless, those shows were more in line with my childhood, but more like Shameless and less funny than Malcom in the Middle. We couldn’t win for losing.

For those reasons and others, I’ve been working since before I was legally able and was the “best” in my family in regards to money sense. If you’ve read any of my Bad Decisions posts, you’ll think, “Holy hell, if Mr SSC is the best in his family, that is a pretty bad situation!” Anyway, I hate the feeling of being broke. I went through that for another stretch in college when working full time and doing school full-time. I broke my collarbone, and was laid up for about 8 weeks with no work, which meant 8 weeks with no income, you know, I think this was what kicked off my student loan becoming my emergency fund money and more problem. I burned through my meager savings pretty quickly during then, but fortunately had a super awesome landlord that let me repay back rent, with no penalty, over the next few months. Still, except for that time and growing up, I usually had a decent savings fund, paid bills on time, sometimes even early, and tried not to overspend my income. Yes, the wheels came off that in grad school, but I was within sight of a great paying job then, so it’s okay, right? According to my family, sure!

Back to the point of this post. Even thinking back to those times makes my skin literally crawl, and makes me feel frantic and I go into hoarder mode. The stress levels peak (I’m seriously stressed just writing this post and being so deep in thought about those times, ugh…) and I just want to get a second job as a buffer to ease the worry about money, lol. It’s ridiculous. On the one hand, I’ve done my best to avoid turning out like that in my current life. I told myself in 7th grade, I’d never live like that and I’m not settling for that to be the lifestyle I strive to achieve. Rather, I promised myself I’d do better and find a way that I wouldn’t have to worry about money 24/7/365. So far I’ve done pretty good on that promise. I’ve had my own missteps, but not really lifestyle failures, just bad, bad decisions here and there…

That gets me long-windedly to the point again. I have this constant fear of ending up like that again, which if you’ve read any of my “light-bulb” posts realize, I am NOT down for the Ramen, trailer lifestyle just to not have to go in to the office, not that there’s anything wrong with that. Maybe this sheds more light on why, but this was my main criticism with FIRE in the beginning. Now that it’s something we’re both on board with and focusing on, I still have this nagging voice in the back of my head telling me, “You’re not saving enough… This will never work… You’ll quit your job and be dumpster diving in no time, stressing about how to pay utilities, find food for the kids, etc…” I know it’s silly because the numbers work out, the calculators and simulators show we’ll be fine, and that’s with all these extra “cushions” built into the yearly budgets. Growing up how I did, I KNOW we can live on WAY less than we have planned, if need be. I have no problem doing that. I just get freaked out thinking about giving up a really good paycheck.

In the end, I know if our FIRE fails, there will be lots of other people, companies, economies in more dire straits than us, because something really big went really wrong at a higher level than just our financial planning. I also know I’m strong enough to survive anything life has thrown at me so far. And I know that more likely than not, it will all just work out fine, but that doesn’t help to quiet that little voice in the back of my head telling me otherwise.

What types of fears do you have over FIRE, planning of it, and the success of it coming true and holding up for years and years? Let me know, because I’d like to know I’m not the only one out there with these types of fears.